Trip Simulator

How to Use the Trip Simulator

The Trip Simulator models how hot your hub motor gets over a real ride. A motor's power rating is a single number, but whether it overheats depends on the hills, your speed, the load and how long you keep it up. This tool steps through a whole trip and shows the motor core and shell temperature at every point, so you can see whether a motor, battery and controller combination is up to the job before you build it. The thermal model comes from years of heating tests on our hub motors.

1. Set up your system. In the left column, pick a motor, vehicle, battery and controller from the lists, or enter custom values. The motor list covers over 130 hub motor models, including versions treated with Statorade. You can also set the starting ambient, core and shell temperatures, and turn regen on or off.

2. Build the route. Choose an input at the top. Manual Plot lets you draw the elevation profile yourself: right click to add points, drag them to move them, and double click to remove one. Google Maps lets you pick a start and end point on a map and pulls that route's elevation profile from Google, though Google's elevation data can be a little noisy. Then choose Bicycle or Fast eBike mode.

3. Run it. Click Run Simulation. The lower graph shows core temperature along the trip, with a second trace you can switch to shell temperature, speed, grade, phase current, power or losses. Click the graph to place a cursor, and the Cursor Details panel shows the speed, power, drag forces and losses at that point. Right click and drag to highlight a section and see its totals under Section State. Ride! plays the trip back as an animation.

The tool is still labelled beta: the model is solid, but the tooltips and documentation are still in progress. For quick top speed and efficiency checks at a steady speed, use our Motor Simulator.